Converting 35mm slides to digital (1 Viewer)

[Dennis Nicholls]

We tried the Wolverine, and ended up returning it. The quality just isn't there. If you have low expectations, you'll like it just fine. We got much better results with our CanoScan 900F Mark II flatbed scanner's transparency lid.

My requirements, including cost and time, were different. I bought a Wolverine F2D Titan, which arrived today. I'm playing around with the settings and discovered that you have to set the "sharpness" value at the lowest possible value (minus 2). This of course should be no surprise to HTF members: the first thing we did for decades now when buying a new TV was to crank the sharpness setting down.

The following was taken by my dad (no photographer) on Kodachrome in 1968. This is the "raw" output from the F2D at -2 sharpness.

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

OK guys I'm looking for some advice. The photos were taken by a professional (my brother) at law graduation in 1996. The first scan was from my Canon 5600F. The second scan from the Wolverine at sharp -2.

What's the problem with the Wolverine scan: too high a color saturation?

Next photo scan is Wolverine with sharpness AND all three colors set to minimum (minus 2).

That helps, but then adjusting exposure down to minus 1.5 does not help.

OK one last shot. I took the above scan with sharpness and color reduced to minimum, and ran it through my Arcsoft PhotoStudio editor. I reduced the color saturation another 30%. Now we are getting someplace.

 

[Luke Pacholski]

OK guys I'm looking for some advice. The photos were taken by a professional (my brother) at law graduation in 1996. The first scan was from my Canon 5600F. The second scan from the Wolverine at sharp -2.

View attachment 78080

View attachment 78081

What's the problem with the Wolverine scan: too high a color saturation?

Next photo scan is Wolverine with sharpness AND all three colors set to minimum (minus 2).

View attachment 78082

That helps, but then adjusting exposure down to minus 1.5 does not help.

View attachment 78083

OK one last shot. I took the above scan with sharpness and color reduced to minimum, and ran it through my Arcsoft PhotoStudio editor. I reduced the color saturation another 30%. Now we are getting someplace.

View attachment 78084

Advice? Ditch the Wolverine. It looks terrible compared to the Canon. Dynamic range is awful, the sharpness isn't as good, and the colors aren't as good. Highlights are blown out and shadows are a mess. You can tweak and tweak and tweak, but the result will still be noticeably worse than the Canon.

 

[Scott Merryfield]

OK guys I'm looking for some advice. The photos were taken by a professional (my brother) at law graduation in 1996. The first scan was from my Canon 5600F. The second scan from the Wolverine at sharp -2.

View attachment 78080

View attachment 78081

What's the problem with the Wolverine scan: too high a color saturation?

Next photo scan is Wolverine with sharpness AND all three colors set to minimum (minus 2).

View attachment 78082

That helps, but then adjusting exposure down to minus 1.5 does not help.

View attachment 78083

OK one last shot. I took the above scan with sharpness and color reduced to minimum, and ran it through my Arcsoft PhotoStudio editor. I reduced the color saturation another 30%. Now we are getting someplace.

View attachment 78084

Looks like several issues with the Wolverine scan, including contrast, exposure, blown highlights, loss of detail and color temperature. You are probably running into the limitations of using essentially a digital camera with a tiny sensor, plus some marginal scanning software, to accurately scan film. The device may be quicker and easier, but it's not going to give you as good of results as a real scanner. Only you can decide if trade offs of saving time for the results are acceptable. Personally, I wouldn't be happy with those results for digitizing my family's photo archives. Your Canon 5600F scanner, on the other hand, looks like it's doing the job much, much better.

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

My old (circa 2010) Canon uses a florescent tube for slides and negatives. I guess it's going downhill now as there's a red tint in slide scans. Plus it takes about 8 minutes to scan 4 slides. I think the tube is dying.

I decided to give the Epson V600 a try. NOTE that it's on sale now at Amazon with a $46 discount. Net price is $183.99. However it won't ship at that discount until mid October for some reason that's not explained.

I don't return used electronics so I'll palm off the Wolverine on some yokel.

 

[Luke Pacholski]

My old (circa 2010) Canon uses a florescent tube for slides and negatives. I guess it's going downhill now as there's a red tint in slide scans. Plus it takes about 8 minutes to scan 4 slides.

I decided to give the Epsom V600 a try. NOTE that it's on sale now at Amazon with a $46 discount. Net price is $183.99. However it won't ship at that discount until mid October for some reason that's not explained.

I don't return used electronics so I'll palm off the Wolverine on some yokel.

See if your scan software has a calibrate function. Sometimes that’s all it takes to get things working correctly.

 

[Scott Merryfield]

My old (circa 2010) Canon uses a florescent tube for slides and negatives. I guess it's going downhill now as there's a red tint in slide scans. Plus it takes about 8 minutes to scan 4 slides. I think the tube is dying.

I decided to give the Epson V600 a try. NOTE that it's on sale now at Amazon with a $46 discount. Net price is $183.99. However it won't ship at that discount until mid October for some reason that's not explained.

I don't return used electronics so I'll palm off the Wolverine on some yokel.

I think you will like the Epson V600, Dennis. That model has worked out really well for me. The only thing I wasn't happy with was the way the included software handled document scanning. I am now using Not Another PDF Scanner 2 to scan my documents - - it's free. The included Epson software works great for scanning slides, negatives and photo prints, though.

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

The only thing I wasn't happy with was the way the included software handled document scanning.

What kind of computer are you using? I'm at Win 10 Pro 2004.

 

[Scott Merryfield]

What kind of computer are you using? I'm at Win 10 Pro 2004.

I have a Window 10 Pro version 2004 system, as well.

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

The scanner in my Canon D1120 is actually just fine for documents.

Early reviews for the V600, circa 2010, said it came with Adobe Photoshop Essentials, but now the ads state it comes with ArcSoft PhotoStudio.

 

[Scott Merryfield]

The scanner in my Canon D1120 is actually just fine for documents.

Early reviews for the V600, circa 2010, said it came with Adobe Photoshop Essentials, but now the ads state it comes with ArcSoft PhotoStudio.

Do you really want to keep both scanners connected to your PC? While I was happy with my old Canon scanner for document, too, I didn't have desk space for two scanners. The Not Another PDF Scanner software does what I need for document scanning, so I had no reason to keep my old Canon scanner. Besides, the cable kept working its way loose from the USB port on the back of the scanner, sometimes even in the middle of scanning documents. So, I needed a new scanner anyway (or needed to find a way to fix the loose connection).

The V600 I purchased early this year came with ArcSoft PhotoStudio 6. I installed the application, but have never tried it. I have other photo editing software that I am happy with -- DxO PhotoLab is my primary RAW processing and editing software, and Photoshop Elements for occasional use. I still have Adobe Lightroom, but it's the last version before Adobe went to a subscription model (version 6), so it's outdated. I only use that, along with Adobe Camera RAW, if I get a new camera that DxO does not yet support. Fortunately, the last camera I purchased (Canon EOS R) was already supported by DxO. Previously, I had to wait several months for DxO to add support for my Canon EOS M50.

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

My Canon D1120 is a large multifunction printer so it's on a separate cart across the room.

I got an update from Amazon this morning - my V600 will show up next week instead of mid October.

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

FREE SilverFast software.

This is not publicised very well. I got a tip from a review at Amzon. It's not at the Epson website.

SilverFast supports many scanner models from different manufacturers

Our SilverFast scanner software gets the best out of many older and current scanners from many leading manufacturers such as Canon, Epson and Plustek.

www.silverfast.com

If you buy a V600, you can get a FREE copy of SilverFast 8.8 SE. Go to the above link and enter your serial number for access to download. I presume this is a stripped down version of SilverFast but who cares at this price. It may be better than the bundled scan software that Epson includes with the scanner.